The Fasting Miracle

The foundations of glory and power are discovered in the things you cannot see, in the invisible, and things unknown to the carnal senses—at least at the casual glance.  It takes the intangible attributes of faith to harness the intangible.  Hebrews speaks of pleasing the invisible God of the Bible; Chapter 11, verse 6:

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. 

Faith is described in Hebrews 11:1:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith is the standard by which men can please God and also the definition of sin in Romans 14:23:  “…for whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”  

The design characteristics of faith are not some kind of mystical mumbo-jumbo, but it creates the very conduit—the means of flesh-spirit interaction. 

The most powerful forces in the universe are invisible—forces such as:

💡Faith;
💡Photons;
💡Gravity;
💡Electromagnetic fields;
💡Electricity;
💡Wind; and the most powerful force and Creator of all,
💡God.

You may think that you lack faith, but according to God, all men have been dealt the measure of faith (Romans 12:3).  The power to interface with the all-powerful, invisible God is a product of childlike faith. 

Have you been born again?  Romans 10:8-10:

8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;

9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

Will today be the day all your sin and shame is erased and all of Satan’s bondages broken?  Will today be the day you release your childlike faith and literally become born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God?  Today you are in the valley of decision.  Choose Christ.  Choose glory and power.  Choose the invisible God.  Click onto “Further with Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the invisible Kingdom of God.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT.

GOD SAID, Esther 4:16:

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 58:6-11:

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward.

9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;

10 And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day:

11 And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

GOD SAID, Matthew 9:14-15:

14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?

15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

MAN SAID: Imbecilic is the word! These Bible-thumpers are imbeciles, simpletons!  Everyone knows that. 

Now THE RECORD: Welcome to GodSaidManSaid feature article 918 that will once again certify the supernatural veracity of God’s Holy Bible.  All of these marvelous features are archived here in text and streaming audio for your edification and as bait for the fishers of men.  Every Thursday evening, God willing, they grow by one.  Thank you for coming.  May grace and truth be multiplied unto you. 

It is not the lack of proof that the God of the Bible is that keeps the unbelievers from Christ, but instead it is the love of the lie. It is hereditary.  Man comes into this world with the deadly, carnal nature on board.  It’s like mother, like daughter; like father, like son.  Grandma Eve believed the lie over God’s truth, Adam followed her pernicious ways, and all their progeny followed suit.  Only being born again—born a second time, this time of the Spirit of God—can deliver the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve from the ranks of the walking dead.  Hallelujah for born-again! 

When God gives direction, wise men and women, boys and girls, take heed and follow.  Every commandment, judgment, and precept of God is true and righteous altogether.  Because they are inerrant truth, obeying them delivers the blessing of doing the right thing.  Because they are inerrant truth, disobeying them delivers the curse of doing the wrong thing.  Inherent in the inerrant words of God are the blessing or the curse—and it’s just that simple.  God’s directives concerning fasting will once again certify the wonderful principle of the inherent blessing or the curse. 

Several foundational excerpts from previous GodSaidManSaid features addressing the rewards of fasting follow. 

🍴GodSaidManSaid, “God Calls for Fasting:”

The holy fast breaks the strongholds of Satan. 

As in all of God’s beautiful commandments, the resultant benefits of obeying are first spiritual and then physical as well — first spiritual, in that the commandment is received and obeyed in childlike faith—and all the doors that opens and closes—and then the very real physical benefits that are a result of that obedience. A good example is God’s Old Testament commandment concerning male circumcision, which was the token of the Old Testament covenant. There are numerous features on GodSaidManSaid dealing with circumcision. One feature notes that when 50,000 cases of penile cancer were measured in the U.S., only 10 occurred in circumcised men. Another feature points out that male circumcision is the world’s number one defense against AIDS. As in circumcision, fasting will demonstrate very real spiritual benefits as well as physical. 

For many years, health activists have pointed to the major benefits of fasting, such as the resting of the heart and digestive systems, the cleansing of one’s blood, and as an overall general healer. Ben Franklin said, “To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.” 

The research concerning the supernatural wisdom of the God-commanded fast continues to pour in. Dr. Stephen Sinatra, in his newsletter, The Sinatra Health Report, under the heading, “Fasting,” had this to report:

One of the simplest ways to slow aging is to restrict your caloric intake. For example, several studies have demonstrated that animals live longer when they reduce their daily calorie count by 30 to 50 percent. Specifically, findings from canine studies indicate that dogs fed only one meal a day live as much as 18 months longer than those who wolf down three squares daily with no dietary restrictions. 

As an aside, during a business meeting years ago, a gentleman nearing age 80 was in attendance. This gentleman was the picture of vibrant health and was an integral part of a very aggressive sales team. I asked him what his secret was. He responded, “I’m like a big dog. You feed him just once a day.”

Dr. Sinatra continues:

Why would caloric restriction slow aging? It appears that a little starvation actually boosts endocrine (i.e., hormone) regulation. In fact, the more balanced your hormone levels — from your pituitary, adrenal, and thyroid glands to your hypothalamus, pancreas, and gonads — the less oxidative stress you’ll have (oxidation is what oxygen does to iron, resulting in rust), and the more you’ll stabilize other cellular processes.

For instance, we know that imbalances in growth hormone and insulin accelerate aging, setting the stage for all kinds of systematic shifts, from weakened muscles to diabetes. Lower growth hormone or higher insulin levels lead to sub-optimal mitochondrial function. In other words, your cells’ tiny furnaces will burn more and more slowly and then eventually sputter and die if they’re overwhelmed by insulin or can’t get enough growth hormone.

So the goal is to promote hormone production, which you can do by fasting. Not only does fasting eliminate an incredible free radical load in the form of food, restricting caloric intake for 24 hours also makes your body secrete more growth hormone, the precursor for numerous endocrine activities. And if your endocrine system is balanced, it jump-starts your whole immune system. [End of quotes]

🍴GodSaidManSaid, “Fasting and Prayer—The Power that Breaks the Yoke:”

The headline in the feature written by science correspondent Sarah Knapton in the June 5, 2014 UK Telegraph Online reads, “Fasting for three days can regenerate entire immune system, study finds.”  Excerpts follow:

Fasting for as little as three days can regenerate the entire immune system, even in the elderly, scientists have found in a breakthrough described as “remarkable.” 

Although fasting diets have been criticized by nutritionists for being unhealthy, new research suggests starving the body kick-starts stem cells into producing new white blood cells, which fight off infection. 

Scientists at the University of Southern California say the discovery could be particularly beneficial for people suffering from damaged immune systems, such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.  

It could also help the elderly whose immune systems become less effective as they age, making it harder for them to fight off even common diseases. 

The researchers say fasting “flips a regenerative switch” which prompts stem cells to create brand new white blood cells, essentially regenerating the entire immune system. 

“It gives the ‘OK’ for stem cells to go ahead and begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system,” said Professor Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California. 

“And the good news is that the body got rid of parts of the system that might be damaged or old, the inefficient parts, during the fasting.”

“Now, if you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system.” 

Prolonged fasting forces the body to use stores of glucose and fat, but also breaks down a significant portion of white blood cells. 

During each cycle of fasting, this depletion of white blood cells induces changes that trigger stem cell-based regeneration of new immune system cells. 

In trials, humans were asked to regularly fast for between two and four days over a six-month period. 

Scientists found that prolonged fasting also reduced the enzyme PKA, which is linked to aging and a hormone which increases cancer risk and tumor growth. 

“We could not predict that prolonged fasting would have such a remarkable effect in promoting stem cell-based regeneration of the hematopoietic system,” added Professor Longo. 

Fasting for 72 hours also protected cancer patients against the toxic impact of chemotherapy.

“While chemotherapy saves lives, it causes significant collateral damage to the immune system.  The results of this study suggest that fasting may mitigate some of the harmful effects of chemotherapy,” said co-author Tanya Dorff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital. 

“More clinical studies are needed, and any such dietary intervention should be undertaken only under the guidance of a physician.” 

“We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to many different systems and organs, not just the immune system,” added Professor Longo.   [End of quote]

Note: This feature doesn’t outline details, but it is likely a medical fast of this nature would prescribe plenty of water.  The article recommends the guidance of a physician. [End of quotes]

The headline in the 11-page feature in the October 2018 issue of Discover reads, “Not So Fast,” and the subhead, “Scientists disagree on how to eat for your best life.  Dieting may never be the same.”  Excerpts follow:

Allen is part of a growing trend that started several years ago, when fasting caught the public’s attention as a weight-loss strategy.  Advocates say the practice is easier to stick to than other diet plans.  But that alone doesn’t account for its staying power.  Fasting also has its share of clinical studies to back it up. 

Research shows it’s an effective weight-loss strategy and also has potential to improve health for people of normal weight.  Regular practice may delay the onset of age-related diseases, such as cancer, Type 2 diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s.  It also appears to enhance learning and memory, and can increase life span. 

In addition, fasting is being explored as a supplemental treatment for brain injury, various cancers, and metabolic syndrome.  Most of these results are preliminary, and many of them are conclusions from animal studies. 

Still, Valter Longo, a cell biologist and fasting researcher at the University of Southern California, says fasting is the body’s built-in fixer.  It holds the power to heal.  “But now, because we eat all the time, that inner repair has been eliminated,” he says.  “We are not benefiting anymore from this ability.” 

Fasting is not the first dietary approach to excite researchers.  Before fasting, there was caloric restriction, or CR.  The methods have much in common.  Overall, they both drastically reduce intake and bring about similar health benefits.  They’re like siblings in a way, especially since fasting studies emerged from work on CR.  And now, many former CR researchers are exploring fasting, often setting the two against each other in the lab.

It appears that restricting calories activates genes that direct cells to preserve resources.  Rather than grow and divide, cells in famine mode are, in effect, stalled.  In this state, they are mostly resistant to disease and stress and enter into autophagy, a process of cleaning out dead or toxic cell matter and repairing and recycling damaged components. 

Fasting has deep roots in human culture.  It’s been a practice within various religions for millennia, and the ancient Greeks marveled at its impact on the body and mind.  For centuries, doctors noticed it could reduce epileptic seizures.  Paracelsus, a 16^th-century German-Swiss physician, called it “the physician within.” 

But it wasn’t until the 1940s that the first experiments began as an outgrowth of CR studies.  Researchers started withholding food from lab animals on alternate days, says Michelle Harvie, a research dietitian in Manchester, England.  And in 1946, The Journal of Nutrition published the first study of fasting, showing that the rats deprived of food every third day lived longer and were less likely to develop tumors than control animals.  Later work showed that fasting spurs metabolic changes similar to those of CR. 

By the 2000s, some fasting studies were showing better results than CR.  In a 2003 experiment, Mark Mattson, a neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute on Aging, found that mice fed on alternate days were healthier than mice that were calorie-restricted by 40 percent. 

In 2012, the idea of fasting was popularized when BBC commentator Michael Mosley aired a popular television documentary about the diet.  A best-selling book, The Fast Diet, followed the next year. 

In 2012, Carolyn Corbin, who lives in the Channel Islands, got some firsthand experience with fasting’s flexibility.  At 5 feet, 2 inches tall and 159 pounds, Corbin was overweight, with a BMI of 29.1.  After seeing Mosley’s BBC show, she took up the 5:2 regimen, eating 500 calories two days a week and eating normally the rest of the time.  She soon switched to water-only fasts two days a week.  Since taking up the practice, the 65-year old has lost 35 pounds and kept it off.  “Forget calorie counting, diet food, and diet drinks,” Corbin says.  “Fasting for weight loss works.” 

And there’s more than anecdotal experience like Corbin’s that fasting can help people lose weight.  In a one-year study, 100 obese adults ages 18 to 64 were assigned to three groups.  One group practiced alternate-day fasting, eating 75 percent fewer calories every other day; another group followed CR, with a 25 percent calorie restriction every day; the rest were in a control group.  Compared with the control group, the fasters averaged 6 percent weight loss, and those assigned to CR averaged about 5 percent, according to the 2017 paper in JAMA Internal Medicine.  

Is fasting better at improving people’s heath than CR? It’s far from clear.  However, rodent experiments suggest it might be better at enhancing cognition. 

For years, researchers have seen mice and rats perform well on cognitive tests when famished.  While on alternate-day fasting, rodents improve their endurance, senses, memory, and ability to learn. 

So what accounts for this heightened mental state?  It seems fasting triggers a dramatic switch in the body’s metabolism, according to a paper Mattson and colleagues published in February in the experimental biology journal FASEB.  In humans, fasting for 12 hours or more drops the levels of glycogen, a form of the cellular fuel glucose.  Like changing to a backup gas tank, the body switches from glucose to fatty acids, a more efficient fuel.  The switch generates the production of ketones, which are energy molecules that are made in the liver.  “When the fats are mobilized and used to produce ketones, we think that is a key factor in accruing the health benefits,” says Mattson. 

One type of ketone flooding the brain is β-hydroxy-butyrate of BHB.  According to a paper published in February in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, BHB stimulates memory, learning, and the cellular housekeeping process of autophagy in mice.  BHB also triggers neurons, including those in the hippocampus, a memory center in the brain, to release what’s called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, a protein that is important for learning, memory, and improved mood.  CR doesn’t generate these levels of ketones because glucose stores are never empty. 

Ketones might also help to explain several mysteries surrounding brain injuries and disorders.  For instance, fasting rodents recover more fully from brain trauma and spinal cord injury, according to several studies.  [End of quotes]

Again, from “God Calls for Fasting:”

Several years ago, a young man visited my office and the concept of fasting arose.  He said the church he attended in his youth never taught fasting.  It should be no surprise when a vast percentage of churches are preaching out of the minority-text New International Version (NIV), which has removed key passages and/or words concerning fasting.  Matthew 17:15-21 in the Authorized King James Version of the Bible states:

15 Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is a lunatic, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.

16 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.

17 Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.

18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.

19 Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out?

20 And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

21 Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

Note the supernatural power of prayer coupled with fasting.  The NIV simply omits Verse 21 entirely.  [End of quote]

The final excerpt is from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Which Bible:”

Believers have a secret weapon against the Devil that has phenomenal power to break down his strongest strongholds.  That weapon is fasting and prayer.  Isaiah 58:6:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

Westcott and Hort have expunged the record of this powerful weapon against the Gates of Hell!  When Jesus was asked by His disciples why they couldn’t cast out the evil spirit, He replied to them in Mark 9:29 (KJV) by stating: “…This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”  However, the NIV states: “…This kind can come out only by prayer.”  Note that the secret weapon, fasting, is conveniently omitted by the NIV in Mark 9:29, and also in Matthew 17:21, Acts 10:30, and I Corinthians 7:5.  Does it make sense that Satan would want this weapon to be destroyed? [End of quote]

Fasting and prayer break the yoke and set the captive soul free. [End of quotes]

Thousands of years before today’s science begins to understand, the God of the beautiful book is already there, and the children of faith have been reaping the blessing of doing the right thing for thousands of years.  

GOD SAID, Esther 4:16:

Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.

GOD SAID, Isaiah 58:6-8:

6 Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?

7 Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

8 Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward.

GOD SAID, Matthew 9:14-15:

14 Then came to him the disciples of John, saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but thy disciples fast not?

15 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast.

MAN SAID: Imbecilic is the word! These Bible-thumpers are imbeciles, simpletons!  Everyone knows that.   

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Barna, M., “Not So Fast,” Discover, October 2018

GodSaidManSaid, “Fasting and Prayer—The Power that Breaks the Yoke”

GodSaidManSaid, “God Calls for Fasting”

 

 

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